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The new Vice President of India is Chandrapuram Ponnusamy Radhakrishna.

On Tuesday the 9th of September 2025, after a daylong polling exercise in the Parliament House, CP Radhakrishnan polled 452 votes against the Opposition candidate Buchireddy Sudershan Reddy’s tally of 300 votes.

A total of 781 MPs took part in the VP election.

The new VP of India is the 15th Vice President of India and Chairman of Rajya Sabha, a third such leader elected from the state of Tamil Nadu.

Seen as a soft-spoken and non-confrontational leader, the 67-year-old Radhakrishnan succeeds Jagdeep Dhankhar, who resigned as vice president on July 21, taking everyone by surprise.

Described as a ‘Pachai Tamizhan’ (true-blue Tamil) by well-wishers, Radhakrishnan was serving as the Governor of Maharashtra when he was named as the vice presidential nominee of the BJP-led NDA.

A two-term member of the Lok Sabha from Coimbatore during the tenure of prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Radhakrishnan came close to becoming a Union minister, but had to lose out to fellow Tamilan Pon Radhakrishnan in 1998 after some confusion over his name by the then floor managers of the BJP.

Radhakrishnan joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a teenager and rose through the ranks in the organisation and later in the BJP, gaining acceptability in the party and the state.

A member of the socially dominant and economically prosperous Kongu Vellalar Gounder community, he became the secretary of the BJP’s Tamil Nadu unit in 1996 and served as the party’s state unit president between 2003 and 2006.

Radhakrishnan brings along a rich political and administrative experience, which will prove handy in his role as the vice president, who is also the ex officio chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

An avid sportsperson, Radhakrishnan was a college champion in table tennis and a long-distance runner. He also enjoys cricket and volleyball.

Radhakrishnan is considered an untainted leader with rich political and administrative experience for the vice president’s office and this would also prove useful as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha.

He was sworn in as the governor of Maharashtra on July 31, 2024. Before this, he served as the governor of Jharkhand for nearly one-and-a-half years.

Born on October 20, 1957, at Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, Radhakrishnan has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration.

Starting as an RSS swayamsevak at the age of 16, he became a state executive committee member of the Bharatiya Janasangh in 1974.

Between 2004 and 2007, Radhakrishnan served as the Tamil Nadu BJP president. In this role, he undertook a 19,000-km ‘Rath Yatra’ that lasted for 93 days.

The Yatra was organised to highlight his demands for the linking of all Indian rivers, eradicating terrorism, implementing a uniform civil code, removing untouchability and combating the menace of narcotic drugs, some of the key planks of the BJP and the RSS.